Trū Shrimp Company to build USD 50 million shrimp farm in Minnesota

A Minnesota company is building a USD 50 million (EUR 45 million) commercial shrimp production operation that will incorporate unique farming techniques.

Trū Shrimp Company, a subsidiary of Ralco Nutrition, based in Balaton, Minnesota, announced on 14 June its plans for a production facility in Luverne and a hatchery in Marshall, Minnesota. It also plans to renovate a vacant processing facility in Marshall to handle more than eight million pounds of shrimp annually, according to the Associated Press.

In 2015, Trū Shrimp Company signed an agreement giving its exclusive global rights to commercialize Tidal Basin – also known as super-intensive raceway – technology. Since then, the company has been researching methods for scaling the shallow water raceway to a commercial size.

Trū Shrimp President and CEO Michael Ziebell said construction on the shrimp hatchery, training facility and processing facility could start as soon as this year.

"We have to have the hatchery first, and in the spring of 2018 we hope to start construction on the first one or two harbors. The processing center will follow so that once the shrimp are coming out of the harbor, we're all ready to go,” he told The Globe, a newspaper in Worthington, Minnesota.

Ziebell said the operation would be biosecure, in order to keep the shrimp disease-free, that it would use all-natural feedstuffs, and that its shrimp would be completely traceable through the supply chain.

"There's nothing like this anywhere in the world," he said, according to the Dickinson Press. "It requires the technology that we've developed, which is protected by patents."